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Wary of Long-Term Commitment to Catherine? Try the Demo First!

No one wants to get tied down to a game purchase they can’t stand to live with. Right, PlayStation Blog friends? Of course not.

Even when you read up on what a potential game mate has to offer, even when you read previews or an early review or two, you’re still left wondering: is this the game for me? Will it satisfy my gamer needs? Will it leave me feeling complete?

That’s why we’re so excited to reveal that tomorrow (7/12), we’ll be releasing a demo for our upcoming game that explores of the psychology and horror of relationships, commitment, and love—Catherine. What exactly is the game’s story? What kind of play style can you look forward to? All such questions and likely many more will be answered with the demo. And all you have to do is download it and play!

The demo will take you through the opening hour or so of the game, learning about Vincent (the protagonist) and his life. Catherine is all about its story and characters; the fact that you’ll meet Vincent, his girlfriend, and his close circle of buddies in your short time with the demo should give you a great idea of what to expect in the full game. And then there are the nightmares… You’ll have to contend with a couple of those. The experience should give you an idea of just how much stress Vincent deals with throughout the game. And just how much fun you’re in store for if you opt to pick a copy up.

We’re also thrilled to start teasing glimpses of the finished goodies to be found inside the limited run “Love is Over” Deluxe Edition available at select retailers. You know, the one with the t-shirt, boxers, and pillowcase taken directly from or inspired by elements in the actual game? The one that even gets its packaging into the “straight from the game” act by bundling everything together, including the game, in a collectible pizza box emblazoned with the logo of the bar Vincent and his friends frequent in the game. Yes, that one.

Catherine lands in a store near you on July 26th, and of course, the aforementioned demo hits a couple weeks earlier on July 12th (tomorrow!). Be sure to pre-order (either the regular or deluxe version) from a participating retailer to guarantee you receive the free artbook and soundtrack CD combo.

Think the demo won’t answer every last question? Interested in seeing even more of Catherine? Have you ever pondered the meaning of life? Good news! ATLUS PR Manager Aram Jabbari (that would be me) will be visiting PlayStation Blog HQ this week, looking to address two of the three aforementioned outstanding items and also to answer as many of your questions as possible, so ask away in the comments section and be sure to check back soon for more Catherine awesomeness!

Downloaded the demo for Catherine from the Japanese store earlier in the year and really loved it, even if I couldn’t figure out the storyline. Seriously looking forward to trying this in English because it seemed to be the kind of offbeat title that I love. Hope it doesn’t lose too much of the appealing bizarreness in the translation to my mother tongue!

I intended to buy this until I heard there is only English audio. Keeping Japanese audio in a game with a significant amount of spoken dialogue is a must for me, especially when the game is as character and story driven as this.

I’m sure you put a lot of work into voicing the characters, but when I watch foreign movies I want to hear the original actors, not someone else’s interpretation of them. Same goes for games like this.

While we certainly respect your preference and, as we’ve stated before, always explore options to include a toggle with the original Japanese voices, it should be noted that Catherine’s story and characters inhabit a generic AMERICAN city. Hence everything in Stray Sheep, their attire, etc. being in English.

And while we recognize the numerous comments from folks adamant that it’s Japanese or nothing for them, we can’t help but feel like those gamers are going to miss out on what is, in our view, one of our best localizations to date, and a fantastic English dub to boot.

They are both standard Men’s large. We know Large isn’t going to work for everyone out there (and unfortunately there’s no such thing as one size fits all when it comes to tops or bottoms), so we chose the size that our data indicated would work for the most people. Hopefully they’re a great fit for you!

Very excited to try out this demo as I’ve been tracking the game for a while. The quick look on Giant Bomb was pretty cool to see how much fun the tower puzzles are going to be. Atlus just keeps on putting out amazing games.

@54: The nuance of the Japanese language means that any subtitles you read will lack significant subtleties. There is a reason for the term localization, we need to have the Japanese interpreted, and of course I wouldn’t expect the original seiyuu to record in english. I’m just happy that AtlusUSA consistently makes the effort to localize titles that have massive and complex linguistic traits.

@55: Large and large, aka super enormous, 1 size will definitely fit all. Its like this for all game merchandise :P

@58: That’s fine for people who want it in English but it came at the expense of REMOVING the original audio for those who enjoy it. I wish more localising companies were like NIS and respected the original game enough to leave the acting in for those who want it.

Day 1 purchase, but I am really disappointed there is no Japanese audio track. Atlus doesn’t have a good track record of including Japanese voices (see: any Persona game), so that’s one thing I hope to see corrected now that technology like Blu-ray allows for massive amounts of data storage.
So to get in ahead of the curve: Please include a Japanese voice option in Persona 5.

Already have this pre-ordered. I’ll be sure to try the demo out tomorrow to get an early taste of the game.

Trying to keep as much of the game a secret as possible so as too not spoil anything, so I’m just going to ask what your personal favorite song from the game is? From what I’ve heard I’m very glad we get a CD as a pre-order bonus.

Well, from the 11-track soundtrack CD you get for pre-ordering either the standard or deluxe versions of the game at a participating retailer, I must say I’m most fond of track 9, “Revolutionary Etude,” originally by Chopin and blissfully remixed by Shoji Meguro. It’s a techno remix of a classical masterpiece; it’s thumping and fast-paced. It fits the portion of the game in which it appears (the latter part) perfectly, in my personal opinion!

I’ve had the deluxe version of this game reserved for months now. Thanks for ruining my nights sleep tonight, Aram. Now I know I won’t be able to get any sleep knowing that tomorrow I will get but a small taste Catherine… We wants it… we needs it… Must have the precious!!!

I’ll likely not download the demo, but no worries Atlus, you already got my money when I imported the game and got even more with my pre-ordering two copies of the “Love is Over” edition. You will also get my money for anything else you make for this game — I loved it that much.

P.S. Thank you guys so much for bringing over the next The King of Fighters game!

I have this pre-ordered, but looking forward to the demo tomorrow so I can know for sure what the gameplay is like.

I know it’s kind of dangerous to estimate gameplay time for the first playthrough, because some people find ways to complete forty hour games in two hours… but what’s the approximate gameplay time for a first playthrough?

A reviewer at a major publication told me it took him 14 hours to complete on first runthrough. I imagine he was a bit of a completionist and exhausted as many of his dialogue options as possible, as our estimate would be about 8-14 hours for the first playthrough (for most gamers), and that’s not really counting the Babel puzzles, the cooperative and competitive local multiplayer, and the appeal of playing again to get a different ending.

We’re confident that considering the genre and very story-driven experience, most folks will be more satisfied with the game’s length!

p.s. I think the reason there’s not dual audio, is that there’s animation in the cutscenes, or more specifically there’s mouths moving.

What I’ve seen from Pixar, is that they match up the animation of the mouth moving with the language, so there’s actually different ‘film’ for each spoken language chosen in the settings menu. I don’t know the specifics for Catherine, but depending on how large the game is, it might’ve been tricky to fit the two sets of cutscenes along with the game in order to dual audio. Most NIS games I’ve seen have semi-static images, without motuhs moving to the conversation, which is a lot easier to implement dual audio with… I imagine that’s the case anyways.

Hell ya! I’ve been looking into this game for some time. You guys are awesome for getting this demo out now. If this game is what I hoped to be, which I know it will be. Then I can pre-order asap! Hopefully you guys at sony can do this demo thing more often, so I don’t have to waste my time & money. I got games to play, thanks sony!!!

I love artwork, I’m thinking of getting the game with the art book, but I’m not sure what kind of art is inside the book. Are there just art that is revealing of the characters body in certain positions? Is there art like environment levels, character designs, ect? Are there both?

I can deal with both, but if its just a book with Catherine wearing clothes that reveal much of her body then I might pass. Don’t get me wrong, I love that art too, but I want a combination of both arts not just the cleavage kind.

When it comes to the art book, I should first comment that it’s FREE so long as you pre-order the game at a participating retailer.

Second of all, the art book does contain a number of beautiful images of Catherine, in addition to profiles of the rest of the cast, a walkthrough of the process by which Shigenori Soejima designed the art book’s cover art (a fascinating step-by-step read for fans of his art!), and of course, the 11-track soundtrack CD plus track listing.

Again, it’s FREE! Just pre-order! …and hurry, because the offer is only for launch, limited by quantity, and only at participating retailers!

CitizenThom, it took me about 14 hours on my first playthrough. But do keep in mind that this was on easy, and with all the times I died thrown in (and without doing the mini-game). I think it safe to say the game is at least 10 hours long though for “a” playthrough, which you’ll be doing a good six or more times if you want all the ending.

Thank you Izanagi for the information. That’s reasonable game length. What you describe sounds like the cell-shaded Prince of Persia and Uncharted 2, where the save file says I’d played 12-14 hours, but I was pretty sure it was more like 18-20 hours with all the deaths.

Thank you for posting about the No Japanese audio track. This unfortunately caused me to have to cancel my pre-order. Your US audio track with Troy Baker and Laura Bailey, while they are decent voice actors, are the primary voice actors for almost every Americanized Anime series. As such I am afraid this Game is going to sound like yet another poor US Dub attempt. Amiami has catherine on sale atm for 3000 yen. Great price for an import for those commenting about importing.

If you’re a native Japanese speaker and would like to play the game with Japanese voices, it seems like importing is the right way to go for you. If you’re not a Japanese speaker, please note that the Japanese version does not have English subtitles.

Why are there so many people complaining about dual audio and ‘cancelling preorders’.
This is an english website about english game releases in english countries, where the second languages in the region are french, spanish, and other latin derivatives.

If you want japanese audio so badly you would have already imported the game. If you want subtitled japanese then you have to be crazy to settle for subtitles. The anime crowd needs to be aware that typical shonen anime is targeted at teens and kids so it uses the simplest japanese possible. Subtitles for catherine would fill half the screen for one sentence and need to include multiple variations.

Catherine uses adult japanese because its for adults, not kid japanese. Anyone proficient enough to understand it would already have imported the game. Otherwise wanting dual audio just to hear the original voice acting as background noise to the reading of a book… Its sort of insulting to the english VA’s, who aren’t even that overused compared to the shrinking japanese VA’s

For the record Troy Baker has worked on HALF the projects that Kōichi Yamadera has, so the dual argument really seems to originate from the shonen crowd

OFF TOPIC: Is there a way we can suggest what PS1 games are in the store, I really wanna play a PS1 classic cause I have the feeling of nostalgia when I was playing Crash and Spyro.
I REALLY REALLY want to play “The Unholy War” and the Jurassic Park games for PS1.
Thank if you read this.really.

LOL! @ useless person for thinking this is a hentai game! XD more like an Echi game i think

anyways… i need to ask this…. I LOOOVE demons souls and it was kind of a let down to see Dark Souls going multiplatform…. why go multiplat when ps3 received the game so well? i bough the game first day and ill buy dark souls first day too! PLS keep the exclusive for ps3 coming like Demons souls 2 in the future XD

I’m quite disappointed to learn there won’t be a Japanese language option. With the endless possibilities and range of Blu-Ray, I don’t see how you could not have at least provided that option for people who choose to buy the game; after all we’re not living in the PS2 era anymore and bound to the limits of DVDs, so it strikes me as quite lazy. This lessens the value of the game and will put off many people on purchasing it or fully supporting it, I feel.

We’ve already stated a few times that there are multiple factors involved in the process. We really wish we could satisfy everyone’s distinct tastes in every instance, but we accept that that isn’t always possible.

I really can’t wait for this game. i’m tempted to buy the collectors. my friend got me interested in this game a while go. i wasn’t interested at first but slowly i became just excited as everyone else. Hard games really fun. Keep up the good work Atlus!

I was really excited and curious about this game. The trailers and such from Japan looked CRAZY. I was a bit exited when I saw it was coming to America. But I am SO glad you guys did a demo for it! I wasn’t sure if I’d like it in the end, because the gameplay looked a bit odd. But I’ll be getting the Love Is Over Deluxe Edition if I like it!

I hope that it’s patched so it’s easier. I heard Japan had to have a patch because it was so hard, few people could actually beat it! Let’s hope that’s not the case in the English version, I have enough games that aren’t beatable on my shelf. *glares in the direction and shudders* Uggh….

This game is a mixture of reality and dream. In the nightmare dream, you will always climb the box up to the tower to get rid of the demons, what I was wondering is whether this game changes the diffuclty, because there are a lot of people dropped the game halfway because it is so diffucult even on easy settings. We need a patch, Atlus!!!!!!

Unfortunately we are stuck in a DVD capacity limited era, when games are released cross platform. Catherine is an 8 gig game (JP ISO), which is the limit for xbox without going multi-disc. So as to not show favoritism, PS3 users don’t get the original audio track. Which is a little odd since xbox in Japan is turning into the “beta” version of so many games, with the proper PS3 version released later.

@BrianFreezeF

Personally, I wait for NA releases to save money (usually) and support the local studios, if I import everything, it only hurts the NA based localization studios. Resulting in less games localized. However, not getting what I was hoping for (due to catering to fairness across platforms), I canceled my order and fell back to importing Catherine. Much cheaper at this point. Import is only $36.

And there is nothing wrong with wanting to enjoy entertainment in the form it was originally intended to be experienced while trying to support local studios. You don’t go to the opera and expect them to sing in English, nor do watch foreign films for English dubbing.